The death of the literary colossus and anti-Soviet dissident has, quite rightly, been greeted with an outpouring of praise for his principled and brave unmasking of the horrors of the Soviet regime. His literary achievements, closely connected with his dissident activities, have also justifiably received much attention.

But there is another side to Solzhenitsyn – one which most obituaries have mentioned only in passing, if at all. Solzhenitsyn's analysis of Soviet communism was based on the notion that the Bolsheviks imposed a totalitarian system on Russia that had no basis in Russian history or character. He laid the blame on Marx and Engels and the Bolsheviks.

Russian culture, he argued, and particularly that of the Russian Orthodox Church, was suppressed in favour of atheist Soviet culture. Persona non grata in the Soviet Union, Solzhenitsyn lived in exile in the US from 1974, but found western culture equally to his distaste.

His historical writing is imbued with a hankering after an idealized Tsarist era when, seemingly, everything was rosy. He sought refuge in a dreamy past, where, he believed, a united Slavic state (the Russian empire) built on Orthodox foundations had provided an ideological alternative to western individualistic liberalism.

The break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Solzhenitsyn hoped, as he wrote in a Russian newspaper at the time, would lead to the creation of a united Slavic state encompassing Russia, Ukraine and Belarus in which this alternative culture would flourish.

On returning to Russia in 1994, Solzhenitsyn opposed the excesses that went with the introduction of capitalism in Russia during the 1990s. In addition, he vociferously opposed Ukrainian independence. But the rise of Putin and the resurgence of nationalism, and the notion of Russia as "unique" and "different" from western liberal culture, gave new currency to his views. Recently, he claimed in an article in a pro-Kremlin newspaper, which was reprinted widely in the west, that to call the 1932-33 Holodomor genocide in Ukraine was a "loopy fable" made up by Ukrainian nationalists and picked up on by anti-Russian westerners. This article came at the same time as the State Duma's ruling to the same effect.

His article contained no serious historical analysis. Holodomor, in fact, coincided with an attack on Ukrainian culture and nationalism, which were considered a threat by Soviet leaders in Moscow. They were frightened of the Ukrainian national movement, terrified of many in the country's desire for independence, and acted to bring it into line. "If we lose Ukraine," Lenin had said, "we lose our head." They, like Solzhenitsyn, considered Ukraine a part of their empire.

The parallels with contemporary Russian leaders' attitudes are striking, and Solzhenitsyn's pan-Slavism, alongside his powerful dissident credentials, made him an ideal ally for those who continue to seek to restrict Ukrainian independence. Ironically – disturbingly, in fact – the self-same unmasker of Stalinist terror with its sacrifice of human lives to a future ideal exhibited a desire to ignore people's desires (Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly for independence in 1991) in favour of an equally fictitious ideal.

Solzhenitsyn's importance as the writer who stripped bare the Soviet regime to reveal its true essence cannot be underestimated. His writings inspired people throughout the Soviet Union and the world with their unflinching revelations. But his credentials as a historian are dubious to say the least, and the fantastical, backward-looking political idealism that led him to support Putin's project is a dangerous relic. Like many of those disillusioned with western liberalism, in Russia and the west, he fancied that "Putin's path" provided an alternative. The reality of this "alternative", involving, for example, the pilfering of resources by Kremlin-backed "businessmen" and the silencing of the media by censorship and killing, is less than promising.